Sunday, July 7, 2013

4th of July

I hope you all had a happy and safe Independence Day weekend!

This pretty much sums up ours:

It was just the four of us since we don't have family here. We decided to just spend the day together since Shayne has been working a lot lately. We hadn't really done anything fun since summer began, and the weather was perfect for a family day outside in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. (A rare occurrence for us here on the 4th!)

It didn't start off so great though...

We were supposed to go to a parade and then a carnival, but ended up getting a late start (I won't go into details, but we were waiting on a certain someone who wasn't me or the kids). Anywho, we showed up right as the parade was starting and spent a good amount of time driving around looking for a place to park. We finally found one really far away, and by the time we walked to where the parade was impossible to see anything. This town is takes their parades pretty seriously I guess and if you show up late, you're screwed. It was crazy packed and I heard stories of people showing up hours ahead of time to reserve seats. That's so not my style! We decided to ditch the parade idea and get out of there before it was over and everyone decided to leave at the same time. So we decided to set out and find the carnival.

Missing the parade was the best idea ever!

We pulled up to the carnival at 11:58 am, and then it dawned on me that it was supposed to open right at noon. We arrived at the perfect time. The parking lot was pretty much deserted and everyone was just getting done opening everything up for the day. We were a few of the first ones to arrive, since most of the town was still watching the parade (and getting ready to create a gigantic traffic jam). We figured we had a good 45 minutes to an hour before it got crowded. That was just enough time to grab some carnival food, buy some tickets, and let the kids ride a couple of rides.

No lines!
He had the whole ride to himself & got a few extra laps.

I love this picture.

The kids got these really cool shimmer tattoo things. We were trying to find face painting for Ayden, but sadly they didn't have anyone there doing it. Can you believe that? I love that out of all the different designs to choose from my kids both chose skulls.

(these two collages were stolen from my husband's instagram)

After the carnival we went home and worked in the yard for a bit while the kids splashed around in the kiddie pool. Then we made our traditional 4th of July cake, kept it simple by grilling up some hot dogs and brats, and finished up by lighting off fireworks in the driveway.

I actually used the firework setting on my camera for the first time.

And no, this was not a real firework show. This was just my crazy ass neighbors lighting off illegal fireworks and scaring the crap out of me. I'm so skiddish when it comes to fireworks and it really freaks me out when people light off those big ones. But we had a great view of them, so we could see these from our front porch.

The kids said it was the best 4th of July ever, so hooray for that.

Now I'm back to working on my latest project. Yes, a project!
Think it's been a while?